Grugtha Darkseer

<i>‘Grugtha Darkseer and her Gloom-Eaters of Stormwind were infamous fanatics of Siroth. Tales of their warriors, deliberately blinded with scalding tar yet able to fight with uncanny skill, were known far and wide during the Second Great War. Even today, decades later, Ogryn all over the world use the term ‘gloom-eater’ as a byword for a traitor, fanatic, or maniac. I know of their wickedness firsthand. I was captured by the brutes during General Mayal Aalwaen’s failed campaign in the Wastes during the height of the conflict. I was taken with two fellow prisoners, a Dwarf and an Orc, to the mouth of a great grotto, where we descended into utter darkness. I, however, surreptitiously cast a spell of dark-vision as we descended, the better to keep my wits about me and plan an escape. We arrived at a cavernous space where there awaited us a cauldron of pitch, bubbling with heat even though the light of a fire beneath was altogether absent. The mighty matron of their clan, hailed as Grugtha by my guards, began the ritual. She invoked the covenant they had made: they had blinded themselves with their notorious eye-plugs of boiling pitch, enduring the searing pain and loss of sight, so that they ‘might live in deeper darkness’ and ‘cleave unto Siroth’. In exchange, Siroth had granted them all ‘shadow-sight,’ which I inferred to be some combination of magical attunement and the heightening of the remaining senses. The true details of how they cultivated their blind-sight eluded me. Grugtha continued her tirade, explaining to her faithful that they had rejected ‘the lies of the light, the falsehoods of the eye.’ In Shadow, she said, were the only truths of the world. Then, to my horror, they seized first the Orc and then the Dwarf. My mind was racing with desperate plans to save these poor wretches and myself. Each seemed more unlikely and hazardous than the last – a spell or two could possibly stun or bind one or two Ogryn, but not the whole mob, and Grugtha herself, being a shaman of sorts in my reckoning, might be able to dispel my magecraft. My humble knife had been taken from me, and even if I could somehow arm myself, I knew I stood no chance against so many enormous brutes. All I could do was cast a subtle spell of torpor upon my fellow captives, so that they would die insensible to fear and pain. Helpless, and able to see their fate in the dark, I watched as the prisoners were executed by submersion – head-first – in the Gloom-Eater’s bubbling cauldron of ritual tar – the same substance, I presume, that Grugtha and her Ogryn used to blind themselves. I pray they did not awaken from my spell before death came to them, for surely it would have been the most diabolical agony. After each had expired, they were tossed to Grugtha’s raving masses of Ogryn followers, who tore apart and devoured the corpses, leaving the tar-coated head as a trophy. While the Gloom-Eaters were reveling in their sacrifices, I realized it was my best chance to escape undetected. I slipped my bonds with a simple cantrip and, relying on my magical vision, crept back the way that we had come. Never have I seen so depraved a sight, nor a worshiper of Darkness more awful than the horrid Grugtha Darkseer. Nightmares revisiting the experience beset me regularly, and I cannot abide travel by ship or attendance at the dockyards, for the smell of sailor’s tar fills me with sickness and dread.’</i> – An extract from The Memoirs of Parvical Lowes, Mage-Scholar and Explorer, Lately of Delanos